The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Coffee Lounge => Topic started by: Bionic on June 29, 2013, 09:18:57 am
-
I am looking to have the whole house carpeted but can't make up my mind what colour :(
There is, what once was a beige colour carpet everywhere at the moment. I guess that looked ok when it was new (before my time) but its looking very grubby and isn't a praticle colour for us.
I brought a sample book home from the shop but its mostly tones of beige going through to brown but I'm not sure that any of them are suitable.
Any suggestions on something that won't show the dirt too badly but will still look ok?
-
Our hall carpet is mocha coloured, I took a load of carpet samples out on a walk with the dogs and matched them to our local mud colour as close as possible, did the trick
Off you go now, get your wellies on, it's the best way believe me
(We also did the porch in that brush matting (like thick door mats) which does a really good job of getting the muck off before you walk on carpets)
-
Alistair, that isn't a bad suggestion :roflanim:
The bit by the door is already done with the brush matting and it does work well so I will probably get that renewed as well
-
It isn't a bad suggestion, it's what I really did, works a treat
-
Our hall carpet is mocha coloured, I took a load of carpet samples out on a walk with the dogs and matched them to our local mud colour as close as possible, did the trick
Off you go now, get your wellies on, it's the best way believe me
(We also did the porch in that brush matting (like thick door mats) which does a really good job of getting the muck off before you walk on carpets)
I did that too, in previous homes. However, I've gone for wood laminate in the hall this time, and apart from the long rug going flying occasionally when there's a 'caninical' rush to the door, it's been great - fluff and hair goes to the sides and corners, and just needs a damp mop to clean after muddy paws.
-
Annie, I was wondering about laminate flooring but my problem is that my hallway has stairs down to the lounge and upto the kitchen so think laminate is not the safest option.
-
No I agree, carpet those areas. I have a bungalow - no stairs. :thumbsup:
-
I would suggest a carpet with a slight pattern on - just mottled rather than horrible big flowers or similar :o Just two shades of the same colour maybe with a stippled effect. This doesn't then show up dog prints, muddy boots which have come in by mistake etc. We recently had a visit from a party coming round to see our smallholding. They didn't take their boots off before walking all over my Persian rug :rant: Of course that doesn't show the dirt at all but I was still miffed - and it's certainly not that I'm overly interested in housework ;D but the rug is not wash-fast.
Our main floors are wood (oak) which is not slippery. I have asthma so we have taken all the carpets out as they were always dusty.
Choose a carpet which is shampooable. I've no idea of the colour. We've lived in lots of different houses with a wide variety of carpets from hideous '60's overwhelming patterns to a dark brown which showed every single mark. My favourite was a mottled gold, in pure wool (no stinting for the RAF!) but we only lived there for a few months before we were posted elsewhere.
It's difficult isn't it! You want something that looks smart but which you won't hate in a year or two. Fashionable colours to suit your walls will seem awful in a few years, but a safe beige is cowardly and boring (apologies to those of you with beige carpeting :bouquet: ;D )
I love those loopy wool carpets - forgotten what they're called - which can be beige-y but are mottled so look lovely. I'm not sure how well they would wear or shampoo though.
Let us know what you choose in the end.
-
As above really.
Difficult choice though Sally.
Our ground floor gets so much dirt on it we kept tiles, second floor is floorboards so we can sweep any dirt trod upstairs to the bathroom BUT we have carpet in our loft room. SAND colour - warm feel to it and can take hot reds and gold soft furnishing as well as go with the stone and plaster walls we have.
-
We have beige every where :innocent: , the old house had beige every where :innocent: , our next house will have either wooden floors or hard floors with nice large rugs.
Now call me tacky but I so love tartan carpet...we have some in our boiler room and its wonderful...I def would have tartan as it looks good and hides a multitude of sins
-
When we moved in we had wood effect laminate all through. It has been great and after 4 years still looks like new and that's with 2 children, 2 dogs, cat, rabbit etc. etc. All accidents disappear in a flash.
OH said that it would be too dangerous on the stairs, so they are carpeted. Biscuit colour with mottled effect. Told lady in the carpet shop that I needed something hard wearing and that didn't show bits ;D .
Laminate is easy to vacuum and you can easily change the colour of the whole room when you like without worrying about the flooring .... just change of rugs. Mud, muck and blood wiped away no trouble.
Show off your home made rugs just grand :trophy:
-
I can help you a little bit, as my main job at the moment is a flooring contractor, many years fitting carpets and vinyl,
but mainly safety flooring and Karndean these days...
Alister does make a very good point... in the lounge, we have a brown carpet..we also have a working cocker spaniel who don't understand the command, get out of that bloody mud and ......STOP. when not shooting :innocent:
the main secret to a carpet looking good and easy to clean is the content... wool will keep the carpet looking full and bouncy ( just scrunch up a ball of wool..it will bounce back) man made fibres will help the wear and tear , thats why the best mix use to be a 80 wool 20 nylon also twist piles or cut piles are better than loop as things can get caught in the loops
there are things like scotch guard that you can spray on the carpets..but these do wear off in time ...
these days, we have only two area's in the house with carpet..lounge & stairs, the rest we have Karndean..so easy to clean and it wears well..when we get the SH it will be Karndean through out.... :thumbsup:
shame we are not up there yet , as my fellow TAS ers will get trade price :innocent:
-
shame we are not up there yet , as my fellow TAS ers will get trade price :innocent:
When are you moving ;D :innocent:
-
don't know yet...but we are coming up to Oxwich next month......we are coming to have a 2nd look at the barn and a bit of fishing and filming...... we will be having an extended weekend.... so if you need any advice , i am more than willing to help in any way i can
(http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee62/johningham/97122aa7-e949-4d82-8a31-a623be2c47b6_zps3040ac66.jpg) (http://s228.photobucket.com/user/johningham/media/97122aa7-e949-4d82-8a31-a623be2c47b6_zps3040ac66.jpg.html)
-
John,
thanks very much but I think you have got more than enough on your plate at the moment. Having said that if you decide you would like to come and visit anyway you will be more than welcome.
-
always willing to help sally.... i have had some fantastic offers of help on here,
we look forward to when we can meet up with you all one day
-
wev replaced our cream/beige carpets with darker tan, just so they hide the dirt more, though most of our house is wooden floorboards, so it kinda matches them too.
we have a green carpet upstairs that hides the dirt well.
my mother had a dark red carpet but the white dog constantly moulted and you could see every single hair!
-
Two- or three-tone patterning / shading / stippling is good. Totally plain - any colour - is a nightmare.
80/20 wool / something just a little harder wearing is practical. But check density - some 80/20s seem very keenly priced, and have less weight of wool per square metre ;)
Coconut matting at entrance is magic. Get a good big one though, that all 4 paws have to walk on before they hit wool ;)
Hate, loathe and detest Scotchguard. IME, once dirt does show - and with pets, and a smallholding, dirt will show! - once it does show, if it's Scotchguarded you really can't get the dirty patch clean. I think the treatment stops the washing water/soap getting into the fibres ::). So my experience is that after the first year or so, carpets and furniture treated with Scotchguard look and are more dirty that ones that were not treated.
I also loathe beige carpets (in my house) with a passion. Simply not practical.
Of all the colours I've had, pale but not too pale green seemed to cope with dirt pretty well. Anything tending into orange/red/brown will too, but may not suit your décor so well.
The other thing is to look at what's outside the entrances. If you can get some pea shingle/gravel down, that does a stonking job on cleaning and drying feet before they ever get inside the house - and that's furry feet as well as human feet, in fact perhaps even more so.
-
perhaps not possible in this case, but we are in the process of replacing floors after being flooded, we are going for Indian flags for the passageway and kitchen (now with underfloor heating), they should be about 22mm, would have prefered something british but our stone can't be cut that thin. should be good for dogs and wellies though :-).
Like the idea of the local mud colour, and would always have a small pattern in there.
-
As suggested, match it either to the colour of your mud, or if you have a dog that shed's a lot, match it to the colour of their fur ;D Either one will help with how much you have to clean it! Always get a bit of a pattern tho, even if it's just a mottled kind of look - much better for hiding dirt :)
-
Luckily I have a poodle so he doesn't shed. At least thats one problem I don't need to worry about.
Its strange how tastes change. Its very difficult, if not impossible to get the big pattens in carpets now (perhaps thats just as well ;D ), the whole carpet shop mainly had books with variations of beige/brown.
I fancy a green but OH doesn't, I would also love red (see my rag rug project in crafts ;D ) but OH doesn't.
Oh, decisions, decisions
-
I think a mellow green would be lovely - like walking barefoot on the lawn 8)
-
I love red - my favourite colour - but would never go for a carpet in red - MIL had one and it was the absolute worst carpet ever for showing dirt/hair/dust etc
-
I fancy a green but OH doesn't, I would also love red (see my rag rug project in crafts ;D ) but OH doesn't.
Oh, decisions, decisions
My OH never questions what colour I choose. :innocent: :roflanim: Apart from our sitting room, we have laminate flooring throughout the ground floor, although I agree, you would be better with carpet on steps. The laminate I chose is oak effect and designed to look very old, ie dirty, so I can always convince myself the floor doesn't need washing, it's just the design. :innocent:
-
I love real wood floors......with Indian rugs or similar.......this house was carpeted before we moved in with cheap and pale beige but the house is way too big to change it, although the floor boards are beautiful, it would still cost a fortune sanding and treating them. We have a heavy duty carpet cleaner that comes out at least once a week...and I am sure my husbands constant use of the Dyson is making the carpet more and more threadbear :innocent: .............just hope our next house does not have beige.......Just a note that in a small house I had, we had some very expensive pattern axminster and I loved it, it did look very nice and did not show any stain up and because the room was small we could afford expensive carpet!!
-
We have tiles or oak flooring downstairs, carpet on stairs and landings and in Lorna's room, tiles in the bathroom and pine boards in our bedroom and office. Although the carpet is a sort of beige it's mottled and that hides a multitude of sins but tbh it vacuums up really well.
The hard floors are great though. We have underfloor heating and it's great in the winter :)
-
I did investigate hard wood flooring in the lounge but its a big room and would cost about £3,000 :(
Went and got some more carpet samples yesterday and now looking at a sort of peachy rust with bits in.
-
We did consider real wood as we had dogs but were discouraged by the staff in the carpet/flooring shop as they said that dogs' claws can damage real wood quite badly when the dogs race round and skid across the floor, unless it's hardboard which costs the earth. They recommended laminate, which quite impressed me as the real wood is more expensive. That was why I went for wood effect laminate.
-
Now call me tacky but I so love tartan carpet...we have some in our boiler room and its wonderful...I def would have tartan as it looks good and hides a multitude of sins
Me too :thumbsup: I wanted tartan for the stairs but Dan said "no" in such a way that I knew it really was "no". I love tartans and plaids generally - some lovely stuff at the Highland Show in the NSA / "Campaign for Wool" tent.
-
get some flotex down..... you can scrubb the stuff til your hearts content
-
I think I have found the one I want. 80% wool, The man is coming to measure up on Friday.
Its going to be a big shock to the wallet though
-
We have inherited a lot of horrid flooring in our house...pale carpet upstairs, very grubby; darker carpet on stairs and landing, smells of all the previous owners' pets and now ours I suppose!!! One day we will replace the lot.
Then downstairs is mostly tiled (none matching) with floorboards in the dining room - the well laid tiles in living area are very practical, the damaged original ones in the kitchen never looked clean and in the loo they've started lifting - laid with wall tile adhesive! So we've put lino in the loo and kitchen and that's a big improvement, but downstairs is always really cold, can't relax unless heating is full blast. We've tried rugs and even put carpet down over the floorboards to stop draughts and even on the tiles but I've just ripped that all up because of doggy housetraining accidents, just not practical.
Anyway after much to-ing and fro-ing we thought about cork tiles we can lay ourselves over hardboard but they scuff with dog claws etc, and the cats would have one big scratching post! So we have come back to the lino idea for the whole of downstairs, a thick one with good backing, to stop the echoing and warm the place up!
We put all laminate floor downstairs in our holiday place, not the cheapest but not the dearest either and that has stood the test of time brilliantly, we allow dogs so needed to be practical. We may do that here one day all through downstairs. Upstairs we put a good wool carpet, again not cheap but it still looks like new - sadly it is a shade of beige!
-
if your looking for something that will last.... have a look here :innocent:
http://www.simplyamtico.co.uk/catalog/Spacia_Woods-14-1.html (http://www.simplyamtico.co.uk/catalog/Spacia_Woods-14-1.html)
have a play with the floor visualiser